


Scenes in the Life

by MermaidMarie



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode: s03e05 A Life in the Day, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 07:13:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18089795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MermaidMarie/pseuds/MermaidMarie
Summary: In which Quentin and Eliot live an entire life together.(collection of missing scenes from 3x05)





	Scenes in the Life

**Author's Note:**

> You know how they had that montage in 3x05? I wanted it to be longer, so here we are. I'll keep adding as I keep writing.

“Okay, okay, I got it this time,” Quentin said, a little out of breath. “It’s gonna work this time.”

Eliot looked up from where he was lounging in the sun. “You said that last time. And, you know, the time before that.”

Quentin didn’t reply. He just stood up and backed away from the finished mosaic, daring to cross his fingers and be a little optimistic.

He held his breath, staring anxiously at the tiles. _Nothing._

“ _Fuck,_ this—Jesus, it’s just, it is never going to be over,” Quentin said, wishing a little bit that he could just smash some of these fucking tiles. But no, they were essential, they needed to keep all of them, just in case. It would be just Quentin’s luck that he’d end up smashing the _one_ tile that was really vital.

“Maybe we should call it a day,” Eliot called over, leaning up on his elbows.

“Easy for you to say,” Quentin muttered. He sighed heavily and sat down, getting the chalk and paper to mark down another failed mosaic. They were looking less and less pretty to Quentin. So much for capturing the beauty of all life or what-fucking-ever.

“What was that, Q?” Eliot replied, his voice a little distant.

“Nothing. Whatever. Just keep sunbathing.” Quentin’s voice was flat and bitter. He didn’t want to be mad at Eliot, but there was no one else here, and Quentin couldn’t really control his frustration indefinitely.

“Why don’t you come have a drink?” Eliot said after a pause. “I can mark down this one.”

“I got it,” Quentin muttered, hunched over the paper.

“You know, Q, you can’t be mad at me for not helping if you reject my offers.” Eliot went back to lying in the sun on his thin blanket. It was late enough in the day that sun was just about to disappear behind the trees.

Quentin pressed the chalk a little too hard, breaking off a couple pieces. _Four months._ They’d been at this fucking thing for four months. Quentin had done the math already—they could do this every day for the rest of their lives and never reach the right arrangement. It felt like they might.

He finished marking down the mosaic, putting this one in the ever-growing stack of failed ones. He felt an overwhelming urge to start tearing at the papers and give up.

Instead, he walked over to where Eliot was on the ground and took a seat at the table next to him, pulling his knees up to his chest.

“We’re going to be doing this forever,” Quentin mumbled.

Eliot sighed. “Maybe.”

“How are you calm about this?”

“Oh, Q, I’m not so much calm as I am resigned. Anxiety will get us nowhere.”

“Oh, right, of course, let me just tell my anxiety that it can relax because it isn’t _helping_.”

Eliot propped himself up on his elbows again. “You ever think about what it would be like if we’d found the others? If it was more than just the two of us doing this?”

Quentin frowned a little. “I mean, not really. The key… the key just popped out of the clock. It—it was supposed to be just us. I mean, uh, don’t you think? If this part of the quest was meant to have more people, then the key would’ve let us, um, y’know, go—go get them. Right?”

A small smile crept onto Eliot’s face. “Right. Really, it couldn’t possibly have been anyone but us.”

Quentin looked up at the sky, at the fluffy Fillorian clouds drifting. “Assuming that, uh, this leg of the quest _had_ to be two people, can you imagine who else could’ve ended up here?”

“Ooh,” Eliot said, lifting a hand. “Picture… let’s see… Josh and Penny.”

Quentin let out a short laugh. “Now _that_ would’ve gone well. Okay, how about… Kady and Margo?”

“The tempers! They’d have killed each other by now. You and Penny?”

“Penny would’ve killed _me_ by now.”

“Rest in peace, alternate universe Q.”

“Okay, okay, how about… Penny and Margo?”

Eliot chuckled. “They would’ve _definitely_ fucked by now. They’d still have given up, but all that tension release might’ve, well, delayed the inevitable.”

“Oh, is that how people keep at this forever?” The words were out of Quentin’s mouth before he realized how they sounded.

But Eliot just smirked in response. “Certainly couldn’t hurt.” He lifted his flask. “Alcohol, sex, and drugs. As a stand in for patience.”

“Penny and Margo would need to have a lot of sex to make up for all the patience they don’t have,” Quentin replied with a laugh.

“As I’m sure they would have,” Eliot replied. He opened his mouth, hesitating for a moment. “What about you and Alice?”

Quentin paused. It occurred to him that he hadn’t thought about Alice all day. He hadn’t thought about her hair, her eyes, the way she used to be. The way she’d changed… How she completely hated him now. “That would’ve been a nightmare,” he mumbled, resting his head on his knees.

Eliot tilted his head slightly. He studied Quentin’s face for a moment, trying to gauge the emotional reaction. “You don’t think you two would have made up by now?” Eliot said carefully, keeping his tone neutral.

Quentin glanced at Eliot with a pained expression. Truth be told, he’d envisioned a much different reunion with Alice from the beginning. A tearful greeting, a romantic kiss, end of the movie, roll credits.

Maybe it was overly optimistic. Maybe it was a little short-sighted, naïve. But in his mind, he thought that everything would be okay again when he brought Alice back to life. He thought it would somehow erase everything that had happened.

“No,” he answered, his voice small. “I don’t think me and Alice are ever making up. I think… I think it’s too far gone.”

Eliot hesitated a moment. He tried to parse through what he could say, if anything. “I’m… sorry, Q.”

Quentin shrugged. “Y’know, it just… it is what it is. It’s fine. It’s just… It’s fine.” Really, it was, and it wasn’t.

It was never going to be _fine_ that Quentin had been so in love with Alice, and it had gotten so completely fucked up, beyond recognition. It was never going to be _fine_ that he blamed himself for everything that happened to her, but he was still mad at her for hating him.

But here, in Fillory, with Eliot… It felt removed. Distant. Like a fading bruise. Quentin wasn’t over it, but it did feel like it was getting better. Like it might someday be okay.

Eliot watched Quentin stare at the ground. He was certainly no stranger to feelings of regret, hopelessness, and bitterness. He’d watched the full rise and fall of the disaster that was Quentin and Alice’s relationship. He’d participated in its downfall.

He remembered the night that he, Quentin, and Margo had gotten way too drunk after the effects of the emotion spells. Well, remembered might be putting it strongly. He had these hazy images of what had happened, some snippets and clips here and there. He remembered Quentin’s lips on his, at least. He wondered how much of that was real.

“I’m glad it’s us,” Quentin said. “Solving the mosaic, I mean. I’m glad it’s you and me.”

Eliot covered a smile. “ _Solving_ might be an overstatement, Q.”

\---

Eliot finished removing the tiles from another failed attempt, organizing them by color and stacking them around the edge. He knelt for a moment, taking a long breath, as he stared at the empty space in front of him.

“Okay, I have an idea,” Quentin announced, walking briskly over, a sheet of paper clutched in his hand.

“Oh, do tell,” Eliot said, shifting to a more comfortable position. Quentin’s ideas could be five seconds long or half an hour or three hours, depending.

“Right, okay, so I was thinking about the phrase _reflect the beauty of all life._ ”

“Really, Quentin, have we thought about anything else?”

Quentin shot him a look. “Shut up. So anyway, I was thinking, you know, we’ve been putting emphasis on the _beauty_ part, but not so much the _life_ part. Maybe—Maybe the mosaic isn’t supposed to _actually_ be beautiful, y’know? Because life is, I don’t know, chaotic and—and messy. So maybe we’re approaching it the—the wrong way, maybe the mosaic shouldn’t have an image, or a pattern—maybe it’s meant to depict the way that chaos can be beautiful.”

Eliot nodded slowly, considering. “Hmm. I see, interesting concept. You just want to avoid coming up with a design.”

“Okay, that’s not—I mean…” Quentin started to protest. He sighed, tucking his hair behind his ear. “That’s just an unintended perk of this plan, okay?”

Eliot put his hands together. “Okay, I’m game. Let’s get some chaos in here. Purples next to reds. Blues with oranges. Throw color and aesthetics out the window.”

Quentin knelt down next to Eliot, looking at the stacks of tiles uncertainly. “Don’t tell me it won’t be nice to take a break from the over-thinking.”

“Oh, I’m all for it,” Eliot said, grabbing a blue tile. He glanced back, watching Quentin with his hand hovering over the stacks. “Then again, how chaotic is it if we’re designing it to be?”

“If you have a better idea, I’m all ears,” Quentin muttered, picking up a blue tile and putting it back, then picking up a yellow tile and placing it in the nearest corner.

“I’m just saying, Q, chaos can’t be organized.”

“Wait, you can’t put the tile like that. They won’t fit together if you put them at an angle.”

“What happened to chaos?”

“Well, it’s still a _mosaic._ The design can be chaotic, but shouldn’t we, I don’t know, respect the medium?”

“This feels remarkably similar to over-thinking. So much for getting a break.”

“If you’re not gonna help, El—”

“Alright, alright, I’ll focus.”

\---

Eliot put the last tile in, crossing his fingers and backing away. Ten months. Ten months at this thing. It had to work eventually, right? It _had_ to. He held his breath as he stepped off the mosaic, studying intently to catch any movement.

Nothing. Still nothing.

He took a long breath, trying to keep composure.

It wasn’t like this was torture or anything. As far as quests went, this one was almost pleasant. It had just been him and Q, hanging out in Fillory in the safety of a cottage, trying to make one beautiful thing.

There was no danger looming over them. No beast hiding in plain sight, no death, no mind control. No betrayal, no violence, no running.

It was just _endless._ All the combinations of these tiles, the vague idea of what the beauty of life was. How were they supposed to figure it out?

Eliot turned away from the mosaic. He couldn’t look at those tiles anymore. He was going to start breaking them soon.

Quentin was asleep, stretched out on the bench at the table. Eliot sat up on the table leaning back and looking at the sky. What he wouldn’t do for a modern-day cigarette right about now. Fillory was beautiful, but there were certain luxuries that it lacked.

Eliot would also have liked to have the Physical Cottage’s liquor cabinet and bar.

Well, there were worse places to be stranded, in any case. And worse people to be stranded with.

As if he’d heard the thought, Q stirred, leaning up and looking at Eliot groggily. “I guess it didn’t work.”

Eliot smiled fondly. “You’re so perceptive, Q.”

“I’ll write it down,” Quentin replied, lying back down. “Just, uh, just give me a minute.”

“No rush,” Eliot replied with a long sigh. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”

There was long pause before Quentin took a deep breath. “I wonder what happens,” Q said quietly, “if we never make it back.”

Eliot rolled onto his side so he could look down at Quentin from the table. Quentin didn’t meet his eyes. His voice had gotten so small. Eliot took a breath. He wanted to say something reassuring, but he was drawing a blank. What if they really did never make it back?

“I don’t know,” Eliot replied finally.

Quentin let out one of his short, anxious laughs. “That’s very comforting.”

“What do you want me to say, Q? It’s a quest. None of this bullshit ever seems to be up to us.”

“I wish it was easier, you know? To fix everything.”

“We’re doing what we can.”

“It just—it doesn’t ever feel like _enough_.”

Eliot heard the rising anxiety in Quentin’s voice. He felt an ache in his heart, wishing he could be more helpful. He reached down and took Quentin’s hand. He ran his thumb over Q’s, squeezing gently. Quentin took a slow, shaky breath and squeezed back.


End file.
